Ellie Usher

This week we had a few readings, one of them being “Annoying Ways People Use Sources”. This article written by Kyle Stedman talks about the way people get angry and annoyed with writers, especially in the way they site sources and integrate quotes. He compares this annoyance to a fast driver being held back by a slow driver who will not get out of the way to let the fast driver past. I believe that this was a good reference to start off the article because it gives people who are not as picky about writing a comparison to see how annoying the misuse can be. One tip he gives to writers is to make sure that you set up the stage for your quotations. If the quote is not properly introduces, the reader may not have the understanding that you expect them to have. This could lead to confusion and cause annoyance for the reader. Another important part of avoiding annoying your reader is to make sure that quotations are necessary. Stedman believes that if you are just stating a fact, you should paraphrase or summarize rather than have a direct quote. He believes that quotes should be used “to draw attention to the source’s particular phrasing”. If it is the wording that is important to the information, it should be put in quotes.

Another reading we had was Karen Rosenburg’s “Reading Games”. She talks about how to better read and absorb the information you are reading in a scholarly piece. One piece of advice that she gives is to “join the conversation”. Any piece that makes an argument involves the voice of many people. She says that a writer never comes up with their arguments on their own. They take bits and pieces of other people’s ideas and piece to together to form their argument. In order to be a good reader you need to join this conversation. You have to pick from the writer’s ideas, your ideas, and the ideas of your peers. By piecing together all the different opinions and ideas, you will have a better understanding of the piece. Another important piece of being a good reader is understanding the audience that the piece was intended for. When you know who the piece was written for you will have a better understanding of what the piece means.